8 Awesome Stock Photo Websites (Paid and Free)

In the age of the internet, visual content is essential. With attention spans getting shorter, readers prefer images and videos over reading words on a screen.  According to a study, 63% of businesses heavily rely on visual content in their marketing strategy.

The need for images and other visual media is constantly growing. In most cases, it is not feasible to hire a professional photographer due to cost constraints. And that is where stock photo websites come to the rescue. According to a survey, 40% of marketers said they use stock photos frequently.

Why Use Stock Photos?

Stock images are usually taken with the intent to sell through stock photo agencies. They’re not clicked for a specific project by the photographer.

Companies and individuals typically opt for stock images when they don’t have the resources to organize a photo shoot. They may also use these photos if taking original pictures is impractical.

Understanding Licenses

Some stock photography is permitted to be used for any purpose, while others come with restrictions. Each stock photo website has a license attached to its images.

You may have a limited time to utilize these images, may be restricted in types of use or how often you can utilize them. So it’s important to understand the license before using the photos to avoid legal issues later on.

Selecting the Best Stock Photo Websites

The best stock photography websites go beyond just selling stock photographs. Many are one-stop shops for a wide range of stock media, such as vectors, illustrations, fonts, music, video, and the like. It makes these stock photography web services a creative professional’s best friends.

Let’s dive in and have a look at some of the best stock photo websites out there.

1. Photocase (Paid)

 Photocase is a Berlin-based premium stock image website.

Their very close curation and strict audit principles make their collection somewhat small yet excellent.

Photocase offers diverse stock images that align with the reigning social mood in 2021. They also exceed niche-like concepts relevant today, such as positive disability images or senior stock images.

Photocase offers two types of pricing models, direct purchase and credit bundles. You can purchase images directly or buy cheap and convenient with a credit bundle.

Their direct purchase is ideal for occasional content requirements.

Price aware clients benefit from the attractive discounts of Credit packages to download their stock photos.

Best Features

• Five free credits and a 10% discount
• Features lightboxes an easy way to organize your photos by theme, project, or even client
• Lowest prices with 20% discount for editorial use
• Images can be used on social media handles like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. at no extra cost

2. Getty Images (Paid)

Getty Images is a very well-renowned stock photography agency.

It’s been around much before the advent of the Internet era. It evolved with changes and rapidly transformed into an online platform.

This stock photo agency has millions of exclusive images from all around the globe, in addition to an exceptionally massive collection of editorial content.

In Getty Images, you can purchase photographs under the Rights Managed license. This more conventional licensing model is tailored according to your specific needs and may include exclusive photo usage, among other perks.

They have a collection of Royalty-Free photos and editorial images that you can purchase in an Ultra pack upon request, with significant concessions for bulk buying.

Best Features

• No daily or monthly download limitations
• Available on Android and iOS platforms
• Access to media manager
• Supports multiple plugins and extensions
• Offers creative insights

3. Stockphotos.com (Paid)

StockPhotos.com primarily focuses on small and medium-sized organizations. Created by a team of experts in the stock photography industry, it offers more than 7 million royalty-free pictures. They have flexible plans and also offer customized ones to suit your budget.

You can purchase images on demand with image packs, starting at 5 images for $39 and up to 100 images for $360.The well-known 99 club plan offers 200 downloads a year for $99.

Best Features

• Quality royalty-free images for as low as 99 cents per image
• Fre image upscaling tool
• Supports multiple file formats and plugins
• Provides special offers from renowned stock photo websites

4. Shutterstock (Paid)

Shutterstock is one of the most prominent stock photo destinations with an impressive collection of images and allied media.

With 190 million assets and counting, they have an endless variety of content. These images are very high quality as well.

You can purchase royalty-free stock pictures on-demand with picture packs, at five photographs for $49 or 25 for $229, coming about in the middle $9.16 and $9.80 per photograph. Yet, the best costs are those offered in their memberships.

You can now try their images and service quality for free with the new Shutterstock Free Trial that gives you ten free downloads for 30 days!

Best Features

• Access to the free image resizer
• Access to Shutterstock editor
• Access to online file converter
• Shutterstock is available on Android and iOS platforms

5. iStock (Paid)

iStock (formerly known as iStockphoto) was the pioneer organization in selling stock photographs online under a royalty-free license.

With 18 years in the business and sponsored by the esteemed Getty Images, the iStock website sells photographs on-demand with credit packs and memberships.

iStock is renowned for its exceptionally curated library with many photographs in two essential groups. However, you can likewise utilize the site’s search feature or browse pictures by category.

The larger the plan and the extended the commitment, the lower the price per image. You can put in from $29 up to $199 per month and get photographs for money-making purposes for as little as 21 cents. You can also get a fantastic discount on istock images with the help of a promo code.

Best Features

• Access to iStock editor
• Boards to organize and share
• Supports multiple plugins
• Supports Adobe Creative Cloud Applications

6. Canva (Free + Paid)

Canva is a famous picture-altering tool for people who aren’t design-savvy. They also offer Canva Pro, a membership-based service intended for business users.

This platform offers a comprehensive library with more than 60 million pictures, illustrations, icons, templates, and more. Their membership accompanies limitless downloads at no additional expense!

However, what separates Canva Pro isn’t only the available download cap. Canva Pro adds a Brand Kit component to the easy-to-use altering apparatus to effectively make marked visuals for various purposes.

Another essential function is a Publishing assistant to manage and send out designs to your multiple channels from one place. And that’s to name a small number.

This full-pack of simplified design costs only $9.95 a month (when you pay once a year upfront, or else it’s $13.95 monthly).

Best Features

• Access to a free online image editor
• Supports image editing and sharing on social media platforms
• Offers various stock and social media related short-courses
• Available on Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows

7. Pixabay (Free)

Pixabay is a Germany-based free stock photography website. Pixabay provides pictures you can download and utilize for free that they crowdsourced from photographers.

They have a pool of over 1.4 million content and counting. The website also incorporates a blog and a community forum to guide its users on several areas of interest.

All images at Pixabay are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license, and you can freely use them for individual and commercial projects.

Pixabay has dedicated staff that assesses the images’ quality and ensures that they are legal to use. This helps the users avoid any legal troubles later on.

Best Features

• Massive collection of high-quality stock photos available for free
• An advanced search engine with a safe search feature
• You can utilize the content in individual and commercial projects
• Supports sharing of content directly to social media handles

8. Unsplash (Free)

Unsplash is a free stock photo site owned by Crew – a platform that connects clients with freelance designers, web developers, and small studio services.

It was created five years ago as a humble Tumblr blog offering photographs from a custom photoshoot for free. Now it’s one of the most well-known free photo websites around, utilized by gigantic brands like Apple. Unsplash facilitates more than 500,000 free photographs from contributors.

Unsplash uses their custom license, which is essentially a Creative Commons Zero license.

On this website, all images are for free, without any catch. Their snapshots are high quality, modern, authentic, and they’re all available to download and use for free.

Best Features

• Available on iOS platform
• Supports multiple plugins
• You can use the downloaded images without attribution freely
• You can use pictures for commercial projects as well

The Bottom Line

The best stock photo websites maintain strict guidelines that filter out poor-quality or unprofessional content. Such strict quality guidelines ensure subscribers access to high-resolution, top-quality photos, videos, illustrations, vectors, and more.

Many stock photo websites offer free high-quality stock photos, illustrations, vector art, videos, etc. In contrast, some offer affordable monthly subscriptions and different licensing or pricing tiers. The different options enable designers, bloggers, marketers, and others to join a price point that suits them.

No single website can claim to be perfect. You can consider any of the sites mentioned above based on the kind of content that suits your particular needs and budget.